Local bands shine amid superstars at SXSW Music Festival

Thousands of artists travel to Austin from across the country and around the world every year to perform at the South By Southwest Music Festival, which since 1987 has become the largest such event in the music industry. Sadly, once they get there, some musicians choke, while others rise to the occasion;’ which is exactly what happened with New Jersey’s Ugly Club when they played a crowded bar on Austin’s famous Sixth Street Wednesday night.

Another New Jersey band, the Everymen, swept into town last Wednesday with a far less happy experience. The band arrived in Austin only to find itself playing an early-evening set at a pub far away from Austin’s bustling downtown; worse, the group’s set was moved ahead an hour because another band had dropped off the bill, so even the few people who knew the Everymen would be in town arrived too late to see them.

They left soon after a quick dinner of burgers and sandwiches for a show in Houston, but they’ll be back in Austin for more shows. “This is pretty typical of SXSW,” commented frontman Michael Mantovani, using a term that can’t be repeated in a family publication. “But we’ll get ‘em the next time we’re here. And it’s always a really fun trip. It’s great just to be away from home on tour anyway.”

The Everymen will have a happier experience Sunday when they return to Maxwell’s in Hoboken for a performance at 8:30 p.m., with The So So Glos.

At SXSW, The Ugly Club’s frontman Ryan Egan performed with the sexy confidence of Usher as his well-honed bandmates played an electric set of the Ugly Club’s signature psychedelic indie-pop, inciting screams from the women and dancing from the men in the room.

The stage sat at the front of the club next to a window that opened onto Sixth Street, and the sound of the band’s music spilled outside, drawing in more and more listeners as its set progressed. Keyboardist Taylor Mandell, natty in a shirt and tie, yelped energized background harmonies as Egan strutted, swayed, and seduced the Austin audience.

“South By Southwest has been a really inspiring experience for us so far,” said Egan. “We’ve very excited to be here and hope to make the most of our opportunities. The Ugly Club has several more performances in Austin but also plans to spend the day busking on the street, where Egan said the band has not only been able to attract some attention, but even raise a little money to help with the costs of the trip.

Only a few Garden State acts ventured to Austin this year, but thousands of other small, independent acts were there, vying for attention amid a cavalcade of superstars including Green Day, Dave Grohl’s all-star “Sound City” tour, Depeche Mode, the Flaming Lips, and Justin Timberlake.

Many observers - including many longtime attendees of SXSW - complain that this influx of stadium-level talent and its concomitant corporate sponsorship draws attention away from the many small, up-and-coming acts who save, scrimp, and sacrifice to come to Austin for the event.

Also, this year the three components of the convention - a technology or “interactive” festival, a film festival, and the music festival - all took place at the same time, making everything from cabs to hotel rooms to restaurant reservations nearly impossible to find.

“Too big, too corporate, too crazy” go the laments, and all of that is certainly true. And yet it’s still possible to navigate SXSW, avoid the lines, and enjoy a bounty of exciting new talent. Wednesday night proved a case in point; while hundreds of conventioneers waited fruitlessly in line for hours for a chance to see Iggy & The Stooges or Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, a few dozen lucky concertgoers right around the corner enjoyed an amazing showcase at a half-empty club that featured Brooklyn’s Laura Stevenson & The Cans, Don Giovanni Records labelmates California X and Waxahatchee, an exciting L.A. punk band named Audacity, and a mind-boggling psychedelic trio from Chile called Holydrug Couple who sounded like Neil Young jamming with the Flaming Lips on some really good acid.

Last Thursday thousands of attendees piled into a large ballroom at the Austin Convention Center to hear Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters and Nirvana deliver a thoughtful, humble, and often funny, profanity-laced keynote speech in which he stressed repeatedly that “the musician always comes first.”

Grohl talked about discovering Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein” at a young age and how the power of those riffs made him want to play the guitar himself. Later, as a young teen, he saw his punk rock show and “that day changed my life forever.”

“The local record store became my church, rock stars were my saints, and those songs were my hymns,” Grohl told the crowd. Later, as a member of Nirvana being wooed by major label executives, Grohl remembered a meeting with CBS Records’ Donny Ienner. “What do you want,” Ienner asked Kurt Cobain. “We want to be the biggest f . . . ing band in the world,” replied Cobain.

“I thought he was kidding,” Grohl said straight-faced. “He wasn’t. And so we became the latch-key kids who inherited the castle. Or maybe it was more like ‘Lord Of The Flies’ with really loud distorted guitars.”

Grohl got his biggest ovation later in the speech, when he wondered how rock music had changed from a completely independent, do-it-yourself movement to today’s highly curated, corporate environment. “Why do we need Pitchfork to tell us what’s good?” he asked rhetorically. “Who . . . cares what Pitchfork says?”